Our View: King's message fortifies us even today

OUR VIEW

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream has been sorely tested recently, and it is easy to understand why some are discouraged, even cynical, about its promise.

But they should not despair. The dream of social justice and racial equality, uttered to a sea of people on the Mall in Washington, D.C., 50 years ago today, does live on.

There are several drivers behind the factors that hinder the dream: greed that keeps wages low even in good economic times; the impulse to solve disagreements violently; and complacency that often comes with individual accomplishment if the individual is not mindful of how others contributed to that success.

We see all of these every day, all around us, and they can drown out quieter achievements: the way social agencies and faith groups reach out to people in need; how teachers set a positive role model for struggling kids; and how certain businesses give of their profits or their time to aid the community.

We like to imagine what King would think of America in 2013, with its racially charged circus trials, attempts to disenfranchise African-American, elderly and low-income voters, prolonged wars and violent entertainment programming.

Surely, the thinking might be, he would be wretched with despair.

But after what King saw, just in the horrific five years following that day in August 1963 when he lifted up a nation: four little girls killed in a Birmingham church bombing; bloody war in Vietnam; violent race riots from Chicago to L.A. - might he not see reason for hope? Not just in the most visible example of change, the rise of a black man to the presidency of the United States (and to win re-election), but in a multitude of smaller ways.

After 400 years of oppression in America, marked in the beginning by the arrival of slavery but by no means limited to slavery, the past 50 years have been remarkable - but the work is only beginning.

Far more needs to be said in terms of interracial, interfaith and inter-class understanding. And far more deeds of kindness must be performed before we realize the dream. But even if it takes another 400 years, we should not give up on King's dream.

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Our View: King's message fortifies us even today

The dream of social justice and racial equality, uttered to a sea of people on the Mall in Washington, D.C., 50 years ago today, lives on.